(Video - Skit guys - shepherd - First Christmas - 2:02)
Intro: All people. That means you too. Here at CCC, we want it to be very clear that we believe God has good news for all people.
If you read or watch what’s usually referred to as “news,” I’ll bet you’re with me when I say we could stand some good news in the world. Seems like news isn’t news, unless it’s foreboding, depressing or horrible.
The angel said he brought good news. That’s at the heart of this story in Luke 2 today. There’s good news to be shared. For a few weeks now we’ve been looking at different reasons that we have from the Christmas story not to be afraid. Today is really the culmination of all of it. The angel appeared to the shepherds and told them,
Luke 2:10
Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.
So, if I could give us all just one line to leave with today, it would include the title of this message: Don’t be afraid - there’s good news for everyone! Let’s just peruse that good news this morning and see what’s so good about it…
1. Good news without apology
No angel ever said, “I’m sorry!” He brought the message. That’s especially what angels do! The name “angel” means “messenger.” Angels deliver messages.
And when this angel shows up and scares the willies out of these shepherds, he doesn’t engage in apologies: “Oh, I’m so sorry. Sorry for scaring you! Sorry for being all shiny! Sorry for interrupting your break time!” No. These terrifying beings were how God chose to announce the birth of Jesus. Heaven’s wonder had just appeared on earth. It was appropriate that some more of Heaven’s wonder would be part of the announcement.
I’m speaking to people who are followers of Jesus right now.
When was anyone ever told to apologize for telling someone the good news about Jesus?
Ill - A few years ago, I sat in a room with fellow police chaplains downtown. We were defining and re-working our charter as a chaplaincy. About 20 of us sat around discussing our role as chaplains, when someone among the group, whose theology isn’t overly concerned with following the Scriptures, started to say we should be careful not to offend people when we go to help them. “For instance, we shouldn’t mention Jesus’ name when we pray. Some people might be offended by the name of Jesus. We should set aside our theology.” Several of the guys around me clearly disagreed. I sure did. I kind of thought that I was a representative of God to people when I took on the title “chaplain.” That day kind of marked the beginning of the Rockford Police Chaplaincy falling to pieces.
We should never speak the good news of Jesus apologetically.
Jesus said just the opposite. He doesn’t want you to be ashamed to speak up for Him.
Matthew 10:32-33
So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.
If the message we had to share was all doom and gloom, I’d be ashamed of it. If the message we have to share was based on a Bible that contains errors, or if the message we shared was that only certain people can be saved, or if the message we shared was that you have to work real hard to earn your way into Heaven, or if the message we shared was that God makes mistakes or that there’s really no difference between right and wrong, or that Jesus was just a good man, I’d be ashamed of that!
But that’s not the message we get to share! We have a message that’s good news! Why would we ever hesitate to share it? You just won the lottery! It’s a ticket worth 100 mil! And you also have a 2nd ticket. It’s also worth that much! But you can only win it once. For it to do any good, you’ll have to give the 2nd ticket to someone else. Would you share the 2nd ticket with someone you cared about? Or would you go, “Oh, I don’t know if I should tell him or not!” That’s the position we’re in once we cross over from death into life in Jesus Christ. Good news without apology! For most of us, the only apology we should have is that we haven’t spoken more freely about it before!
Christmas makes such an easy time to talk about Jesus. And you don’t have to be belligerent or snarky to do it. Just because so many other people are tiptoeing around it all doesn’t mean you have to! Go ahead and say “Merry Christmas!” Go ahead and talk to someone about what you’re doing to celebrate the way God came and lived among us! Go ahead and put a cross in your window or yard! Invite people to come worship with you Tuesday night at 5!
Do you have good news, or not? If you claim to follow Jesus, you do.
The angel said to these shepherds, “I am bringing you good news.” Literally: I am good-newsing you (gospeling you).
When was the last time you gospeled someone?
Good news is a good thing to share. It’s something you don’t apologize for, and…
2. Good news that undoes fear
How scared were those shepherds when a shining angel lit up the night sky?
Like the guy in the video said, “Too late!” When Heavenly beings appear to people on earth, fear is the normal response.
If that sight didn’t strike fear into your heart, something’s wrong. It’s appropriate to have a fear for all things Heavenly. In fact, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and is a part of having a right attitude toward God in the first place. The lack of appropriate respect for God is keeping a lot of people from submitting to Him in the first place. Losing a sense of awe and reverence for God stops people from worshiping Him in a right way.
So, when we talk about the angel saying not to be afraid, I think we can un-include that kind of fear where we see the glory of God and are afraid. Go ahead and keep that fear, or get it if you haven’t yet! It fits you well!
The fear that this good news really undoes is the…
Fear that looks at tomorrow without hope.
These shepherds were people who lived day-to-day. Their peoples’ history was over 2100 yrs old, but the past 200 years had been filled with stories of violent takeovers and revolts. Finally, around 63 BC, the revolt under the Maccabees was crushed by Pompey of Rome, putting Judea under control of the Caesars. Eventually, Herod was made king of Judea by the Roman emperor and Senate. Roman, Greek, and Hebrew cultures were so intermingled in the land of Judea that when a description of Jesus was attached to His cross, it was written in Latin, Greek, and Aramaic. It was not a happy melting pot. They were difficult times to live in.
When you’re a Jew living in those political circumstances, there’s a fearful uncertainty that clouds every day. Think of it like being a Jew during the beginnings of the Holocaust, where people in power, who hate you and have no respect for your worth, are in position to shame you and take advantage of you any time they wish.
How fearful would you be to walk the streets, to resist the powers that be, to even plan for your future?
That’s the world these shepherds woke up to every day. They were simple Jewish men, trying to eke out a living day-by-day in a world that was filled with poverty, disease, and injustice. They were waiting for a great deliverer they had read and heard about all their lives, but never seeing it happen.
This Christmas season, when you hear the dark minor key and the somber words of the song “O Come, O Come, Immanuel,” understand what’s behind it all.
That night, in a the fields outside of Bethlehem, representatives from Heaven brought the message of hope that undoes the fear of an empty future. Immanuel was here!
How I wish that every person here today could have an angel appear to you to tell you not to fear your situation - past, present, or future - because of the good news that undoes fear! I’m not an angel, but I do have the privilege to say that message! God came to live among us! The Messiah came and brought to earth something humans can’t do on our own.
That is our source of hope! That is where peace on earth comes from! And that is the good news we get to share. And it gets better…
There’s another feature of the news that makes it truly GOOD news. It’s…
3. Good news that includes every person
I won’t go into a long description of the social standing of shepherds. Let’s just say they weren’t the people you invited to black tie dinners. They did dirty, smelly, outside work. They weren’t way up on the list of who’s who in society.
So, when God became flesh, why tell it to shepherds? There are a few ideas out there…
Jesus was the Good Shepherd?
Jesus was the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world?
They were the only people up that night?
They would make good characters in Christmas plays many years later?
I want to suggest to you that by announcing Jesus’ birth to shepherds first, God was making a powerful statement. Jesus wasn’t just here for the rich; not just for those in positions of power; not just for the socially regarded. Emptying Himself and taking on helpless, human existence was just the start. Jesus was born while Mary was away from home, to peasant parents, under humanly questionable conditions. There was nothing desirable about the way He looked. He grew up with no place to call home, no place to lay His head. He associated with outcasts and nobodies. Throughout His ministry He was reaching out to tax collectors, drunks, prostitutes, disabled people, diseased people, and people possessed with demons. He died the humiliating death of a criminal, crucified between 2 thieves, and He was buried in a borrowed tomb.
So, when God in flesh was born and placed in an animal feeding trough in the town of Bethlehem, is it really any surprise that God chose shepherds out in the fields to be the first ones to hear about it?
Sure, listen to the message itself - “…unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.”
And listen to the fact that the greatest news on earth was given first to very common people. The good news of the gospel includes every person. Sometimes you’ll hear people putting down the message of Jesus because it’s so exclusive. Nothing could be farther from the truth. All you have to do is a couple of searches through the Bible of words like “whoever” and “anyone” and you’ll quickly see that the good news about Jesus is actually very inclusive. “Everyone” gets included a lot:
Matthew 18:4
Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
John 3:14-16
And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
John 3:36a
Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life;…
John 4:14a
but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again…
John 6:35
Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.
John 6:37
All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.
John 7:37b-38
…“If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’”
John 11:25
Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live,
Romans 9:33
as it is written, “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense; and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”
Romans 10:13
For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
1 John 4:15
Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.
1 John 5:1
Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and whoever loves the Father loves the child born of Him.
The good news includes every person. So, why do we hesitate to tell it to every person?
I suppose there are a lot of reasons - fear of rejection; fear that we don’t know enough; fear that we’ll somehow end up with less ourselves; fear of being humiliated. Do you hear a theme here? FEAR. And today we’re looking at the message of an angel, again, and the first thing he says is “Don’t be afraid.”
Conclusion:
Our hesitation to tell others is kind of like a story from 2 Kings. The city of Jerusalem was under siege by the Arameans. Everyone was locked up, behind the walls, starving, except for 4 men with leprosy. They weren’t allowed inside, so they were just kind of hanging around the city gate as everyone began to feel the desperation of the siege. These guys finally figured they were going to die whether they starved in the city or were killed by the Arameans, so they decided to go to the enemy and surrender. When they went to the enemy camp at dusk, they discovered that God had caused the Arameans to think they heard a great army. They all fled for their lives and left everything behind. In walked these 4 men with leprosy to an empty camp. They went to one of the tents and chowed down. They took a bunch of gold, silver, and clothes and went off and hid it. Then then came back to another tent, took a bunch of stuff and hid it too. It says in v9:
2 Kings 7:9 Then they said to each other, “What we’re doing is not right. This is a day of good news and we are keeping it to ourselves. If we wait until daylight, punishment will overtake us. Let’s go at once and report this to the royal palace.”
I think that people who have heard the good news and then don’t share it with others are a lot like those men. Our natural tendency is to horde and gorge and be glad for ourselves and forget that there’s a whole city full of people who are starving to know what we have learned. And what we need to do is say to one another, “What we are doing is not right.”
The shepherds were not only the first humans to have the birth of Jesus announced to them. They seem also to be the first humans to share the good news with someone else.
Luke 2:16-18
And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger. And when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child. And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them.
I don’t speak for the entire Church body here today, but I think I speak for a lot of us when I say to you who aren’t followers of Jesus yet, “Please, forgive us for not sharing the good news.” Sometimes we forget that we were in a bad situation, and somehow we heard good news - the best news - and it changed our lives. And now, just like those shepherds who would never be the same, we want to tell you what we’ve heard about One Who was born in Bethlehem, wrapped in cloths, and laid in a manger. When we think about it, and all it means to us, it really does give us the greatest reason to be unafraid.
Wouldn’t you like to be there too? Unafraid of death?
Right now, I’d like everyone here today who has already become a follower of Jesus to just start praying for this time. Pray that the Lord will make you unafraid to share the good news. Pray that right now, others who have heard the good news will make the same decision you have made - to follow Jesus with all your heart.
